Back from the USSR
Apr. 30th, 2006 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby*waves*
I'm back. I'm still backlogged with life stuff and jetlagged, so I haven't been able to do any Livejournal, but I'm determined to start posting photos and journal entries. I've also started a Flickr account, Sabotabby in Russia, where I'll eventually upload all the photos I took.
[I met up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
annaotto (Anya) in New York and we flew to Moscow. She brought Ambien with her, so all I remember from the flight was watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and passing out. Anya is awesome. Ambien is awesome.)
Sunday, April 16
Moscow
We met Dima, Anya's father, at the airport, and drove around to get an overview of the city.
Decided that Stalinist architecture gets a bad rap—it's really rather nice. Ate dinner at an insanely good restaurant and decided that I never needed to eat again. Anya's family [this included her sister, Tanya, and Dima's partner, Natasha] seemed somewhat amused at my (in)ability to handle vodka. Note to self: Stop getting excited every time you see a hammer and sickle—they are everywhere.
Note: I didn't write about the two surprises we got upon arriving in Moscow. The first was the existence of Natasha. At first Anya didn't know who she was, and then thought that she was possibly Dima's newest wife, but it turns out they're not married. I'm not sure. It was all a bit confusing.
The second surprise was that we had the apartment to ourselves. They own several properties in the city and were moving from one to another, so we had a ridiculously good living situation for the week.
Monday, April 17
The Mayakovsky Museum is the most amazing thing ever—all of his belongings mashed into a giant Constructivist sculpture that spans several floors.
The front of the museum.
The shopkeeper at the gift store had me pegged right away and tried to sell me Lenin and Stalin books, all of which were in Russian. Did pick up a 1938 edition of Mayakovsky's poetry even though I can't read it, just because it's so damned cool.
Mayakovksy is my long-dead Soviet boyfriend. If you've never read any of his poetry, now's your chance to do something about it.
From there, we went to Red Square and saw Kazan Cathedral, a 1993 reproduction of the 1636 church destroyed by Stalin, and the mindblowing Intercession Cathedral (better known as St. Basil's).
You know what this is.
Up close and personal.
Kazan Cathedral.
This is Lenin's Tomb, but more about that later.
![](https://static.flickr.com/56/137928880_e6ca894eef.jpg?v=0")
One of the Kremlin towers.
Red Square, with a nice view of the GUM. We went into the GUM but it's just a really boring mall with a lot of American stores.
We also went by the former KGB headquarters. It's now in use by the Federal Security Services (FSB) and looks so intimidating that we suspected that it's probably still used for the same sort of nastiness.
This is one of the less-terrifying views. Shortly after taking this, a uniformed gentleman came up to us and suggested that we should move along.
Our final stop of the day was Patriarch's Ponds—unremarkable enough in appearance, but worth seeing because that's where the beginning of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita is set.
Woland did not make an appearance.
I don't have a picture of it, but there's a playground in the park. Creepy.
Overlooking the park is a weird-looking building that seems to have a small replica of the Monument to the Third International mounted on the roof. No idea why.
Now that I'm looking at it, it doesn't exactly look like the Monument to the Third International. But close enough.
We are staying right downtown near Belorusskaya Station. The area itself is kind of strange. The nearest large street could be any major street in North America, with high-end Western chain stores and such. There are billboards everywhere, and people who serve as human billboards. It seems like everyone is trying to sell you something. Near Red Square, we even saw a babushka selling puppies and kittens, which was horribly sad.
It's also the first place I've ever been completely illiterate; I can't figure out Cyrillic for the life of me. It makes everything—even the ads—look much cooler, but I'm hopelessly dependent on Anya's translation skills. I'm envious of the days of Mayakovsky's ROSTA posters when you didn't need to read to figure out what was going on.
Note: I got better at understanding the Cyrillic alphabet the longer I was in Russia. Last night I had a nightmare about it, though.
I'm back. I'm still backlogged with life stuff and jetlagged, so I haven't been able to do any Livejournal, but I'm determined to start posting photos and journal entries. I've also started a Flickr account, Sabotabby in Russia, where I'll eventually upload all the photos I took.
[I met up with
annaotto (Anya) in New York and we flew to Moscow. She brought Ambien with her, so all I remember from the flight was watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and passing out. Anya is awesome. Ambien is awesome.)Sunday, April 16
Moscow
We met Dima, Anya's father, at the airport, and drove around to get an overview of the city.
Decided that Stalinist architecture gets a bad rap—it's really rather nice. Ate dinner at an insanely good restaurant and decided that I never needed to eat again. Anya's family [this included her sister, Tanya, and Dima's partner, Natasha] seemed somewhat amused at my (in)ability to handle vodka. Note to self: Stop getting excited every time you see a hammer and sickle—they are everywhere.
Note: I didn't write about the two surprises we got upon arriving in Moscow. The first was the existence of Natasha. At first Anya didn't know who she was, and then thought that she was possibly Dima's newest wife, but it turns out they're not married. I'm not sure. It was all a bit confusing.
The second surprise was that we had the apartment to ourselves. They own several properties in the city and were moving from one to another, so we had a ridiculously good living situation for the week.
Monday, April 17
The Mayakovsky Museum is the most amazing thing ever—all of his belongings mashed into a giant Constructivist sculpture that spans several floors.
The front of the museum.
The shopkeeper at the gift store had me pegged right away and tried to sell me Lenin and Stalin books, all of which were in Russian. Did pick up a 1938 edition of Mayakovsky's poetry even though I can't read it, just because it's so damned cool.
Mayakovksy is my long-dead Soviet boyfriend. If you've never read any of his poetry, now's your chance to do something about it.
From there, we went to Red Square and saw Kazan Cathedral, a 1993 reproduction of the 1636 church destroyed by Stalin, and the mindblowing Intercession Cathedral (better known as St. Basil's).
You know what this is.
Up close and personal.
Kazan Cathedral.
This is Lenin's Tomb, but more about that later.
One of the Kremlin towers.
Red Square, with a nice view of the GUM. We went into the GUM but it's just a really boring mall with a lot of American stores.
We also went by the former KGB headquarters. It's now in use by the Federal Security Services (FSB) and looks so intimidating that we suspected that it's probably still used for the same sort of nastiness.
This is one of the less-terrifying views. Shortly after taking this, a uniformed gentleman came up to us and suggested that we should move along.
Our final stop of the day was Patriarch's Ponds—unremarkable enough in appearance, but worth seeing because that's where the beginning of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita is set.
Woland did not make an appearance.
I don't have a picture of it, but there's a playground in the park. Creepy.
Overlooking the park is a weird-looking building that seems to have a small replica of the Monument to the Third International mounted on the roof. No idea why.
Now that I'm looking at it, it doesn't exactly look like the Monument to the Third International. But close enough.
We are staying right downtown near Belorusskaya Station. The area itself is kind of strange. The nearest large street could be any major street in North America, with high-end Western chain stores and such. There are billboards everywhere, and people who serve as human billboards. It seems like everyone is trying to sell you something. Near Red Square, we even saw a babushka selling puppies and kittens, which was horribly sad.
It's also the first place I've ever been completely illiterate; I can't figure out Cyrillic for the life of me. It makes everything—even the ads—look much cooler, but I'm hopelessly dependent on Anya's translation skills. I'm envious of the days of Mayakovsky's ROSTA posters when you didn't need to read to figure out what was going on.
Note: I got better at understanding the Cyrillic alphabet the longer I was in Russia. Last night I had a nightmare about it, though.
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Date: 2013-11-05 07:38 pm (UTC)I actually miss the days when I knew no Cyrillic at all, because then Russian posters just looked so much cooler. I don't know if you were being sarcastic about the ROSTA posters but I've never been able to figure out wtf is going on in those. In the picture on Wikipedia, for example, I genuinely don't get the first two, even though they look cool.